Re: Soft, acid water

["Andrew N. Blumhagen" <ablumhag@rfek.com>]

======== Original Message ========
At 01:46 PM 4/29/98 -0500, you wrote:
>
>pH down past 6.8 - 7.0. 10 gallon  <snip> 
>
>I had the apistos in a heavily planted 30 gallon community tank that had a
>pH just under 6 and the female went into brilliant breeding colors.  I've
>done my best to replicate those conditions but am not having any success. 

Ok...maybe I'm missing something here but :)  why would there be such a
difference between these two tanks???  If the conditions are being
replicated shouldn't there be something that is responsible for the
variation in pH??  Is it possible that there is something in the 10g not in
the 30g or vs vs?  Same water source, plants, gravel, driftwood, clay pot,
???  Seems like there must be something that has to be different that is
responsible for the difference.  Are the gravel sources the same?
Nancy 


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======== Fwd by: Andrew N. Blu ========
The substrate in the 30g tank is fluorite and sand, in the 10g apisto tank
it's regular old aquarium gravel.  Does fluorite cause significant
fluctuations in water chemistry?

Another possibility is that the bogwood in the 30g was new, i.e. had never
been soaked in an aquarium before to my knowledge, and the bogwood in the
10g had been in an aquarium for some time before.

I'm trying the suggestion I got earlier which was to steep peat (say that 5
times fast) in hot water and slowly add the resulting "tea" with the next
water change.